We’ve added a couple of great features to Creately – Image Search and Easier Diagram Sharing. We’ve already discussed how our New Image search feature works; now lets take a look around the Easier Diagram Sharing feature.
Creately’s improved collaboration feature supports many usability functions, which is designed specifically to manage projects better, improve visual project communication, shorten project life cycles, increase ownership and accountability, and provide continuous access to diagrams within the project in a secure environment. So basically you can now do more with less. Read below for details :
Creately’s share panel gets a revamp as we’ve added new functions which would make sharing a whole lot more just easier than before. You could click on the Share icon from the right-hand side panel to explore the Share Settings. This is re-designed and comes in sub-sections which you might want to take a deeper look?
Editors of a Project
A complete list of all the editors is displayed here! The first on the list is always the owner of the diagram, followed by all the editors who have permission to view and/or edit the diagram. You could mouse over the names to see some action (check out the image on the left for details). However, you could also deny access to your project by removing an editor. Simply hit on the close button to remove an editor!
Invite Collaborators By Email
You can add multiple collaborators by typing in the Email IDs. As you start typing, the new auto-complete feature prompts you with the right email addresses. You can select the collaborators, and they’ll be added as editors. A list of names will appear under the Editors section (explained above). This becomes quite useful as you clearly know the ownership and accountability of the project.
Share with all on the Team
This option becomes easy when you have to share a project with the entire team. You can now simply tick the checkbox to invite all the users on your team, instead of having to punch in each of their Email IDs one after the other.
Enable Edit and View Links
Creately now differentiates its users as Viewers and Editors. While you share a non-editable version of the diagram with the viewers, you can give full permission to make changes on the diagrams to the editors.
From the right-hand Share Panel, you can simply click to Enable View link and share the non-editable version (view only) with everyone on your team. Now, anyone with the view link can simply click on the link to view the diagram in the Creately Diagram Viewer instead of having to log in to Creately. This comes handy when you want someone to only see the diagram and not make edits to it.
You could also click to Enable Edit Link, copy and share the link with everyone on the team to give them full permissions to make changes on the diagram. By clicking on the URL, you can now open up the diagram in the Diagram Viewer Page, and edit with permissions.
These links can be disabled at anytime by ticking off. When ticked off no one can use the URL to see/edit the diagrams again. The URLs can also be reset by clicking on the “Reset” link below the URL. This will change the URLs so the previous URL becomes invalid and the new URL will be generated.
2) Publish Sidebar Panel
The Embed option will let you embed a diagram into any web page/Google site/Google code wiki. The diagram does not have to be public for it to be embedded, but in this case only the people who have access to the embedded source can see it.
3) Save notification
When saving a diagram, you could notify your collaborators via emails. You could click on the check-box in the save diagram dialog, and write in the details (if you feel it) and click to save. Once you click to save, it’ll automatically send your collaborators an email with the latest updates.
Now if someone were to ask you, “How’s the new collaboration feature working in Creately?” Would you say it’s excellent, not bad, or not good at all? We believe its great, but do give it a try yourself and keep us posted on what you think.